Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video Wednesday blasting antisemitism on American college campuses, saying the atmosphere had become like Germany in the 1930s, and calling on leaders to do more to fight it.
Netanyahu was responding to a wave of radical anti-Israel and antisemitic protests at Columbia University and other college campuses. Columbia moved to “hybrid” online learning due to the threat to the security of Jewish students.
In a two-minute address in English, Netanyahu — who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the campuses engulfed by radical protests today — warned about the historic precedents for today’s protests.
“Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities,” Netanyahu said. “They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”
He called the responses of several university presidents “shameful,” adding that “more has to be done.”
He added that the protesters were not just calling for the death of Israel and the death of Jews, but for the death of America. He noted that antisemitism has often destroyed the societies that have allowed it to flourish.
Netanyahu added that the accusations made by protesters against Israel were “one big lie,” noting that this, too, was not new. “We’ve seen in history that antisemitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander — lies that were cast against the Jewish people that were unbelievable — yet people believe them.”
He said that all who wished to defend western civilization had to unite to stop antisemitism — on university campuses and around the world.
Funding for the protests is reportedly coming from a variety of radical sources — including, according to the UK Daily Mail, Democratic Party mega-donor George Soros. The Wall Street Journal also reported this week that the protests fit a strategy promoted by Hamas and other Iran-backed groups to undermine western support for Israeli security.
Update: The Prime Minister’s Office released the full transcript of Netanyahu’s statement:
What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that’s not what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful.
Now, fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have responded differently but there has to be more. More has to be done. It has to be done not only because they attack Israel, that’s bad enough, not only because they want to kill Jews wherever they are, that’s bad enough, it’s also when you listen to them, it’s also because they say not only, ‘Death to Israel. Death to the Jews,’ but ‘death to America.’ And this tells us that there is an antisemitic surge here that has terrible consequences.
We see this exponential rise of antisemitism throughout America and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians. Yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide, Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes. It’s all one big libel. But that’s not new. We’ve seen in history that antisemitic attacks were always preceded by vilification and slander, lies that were cast against the Jewish people that are unbelievable yet people believed them.
Now, what is important now is for all of us, all of us who are interested and cherish our values and our civilization, to stand up together and to say enough is enough. We have to stop antisemitism because antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine. It always precedes larger conflagrations that engulf the entire world.
So I ask all of you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who are concerned with our common future and our common values to do one thing: Stand up, speak up, be counted. Stop antisemitism now.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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